Man Accused of Burning His Wife to Death Tells Detectives He Has Memory Gaps

Saturday

Dec 1, 2012 at 11:28 PM

Five straight days awake, fueled by meth and pills. That he remembers. But Joshua Kimbrough's memory falters here: He stood in an abandoned Lakeland home Aug. 3 as the binge crested. He fought with his wife, Megan. There were flames. And they covered her body.

By MATTHEW PLEASANTTHE LEDGER

LAKELAND | Five straight days awake, fueled by meth and pills. That he remembers.

But Joshua Kimbrough's memory falters here: He stood in an abandoned Lakeland home Aug. 3 as the binge crested. He fought with his wife, Megan. There were flames. And they covered her body.

How did the fire start? He will tell you he doesn't remember. He will tell you he tried to extinguish her. He will tell you he kissed her forehead, then ran.

Four months later, Kimbrough sat in a visiting area at the Polk County Jail. His memory, he said, hasn't improved over time.

A grand jury indicted Kimbrough on Tuesday, formally accusing him of something he insists he can't remember — dousing Megan, 26, with gasoline and setting her aflame.

Megan, burned over 80 percent of her body, survived more than three months before dying Nov. 10.

Kimbrough said he thought she might live. He learned of her death when deputies woke him at 1:30 a.m. in his cell the day after. They took fresh fingerprints and told him he'd been charged with first-degree murder.

"If that's the way it's got to be," he said of his charges, "that's the way it's got to be."

A phone receiver to his ear, his shaven head lowered as he sat in front of a video visitation screen, Kimbrough, 32, spoke for an hour Thursday with a Ledger reporter. He hesitated to discuss the fire beyond what he has already told Lakeland Police Department detec-tives.

"I'm not comfortable talking about that," he said. "I've got a long road ahead of me."

He did talk about Megan and their fast-moving relationship and how it deteriorated almost as quickly because of drug addiction. He said he, as much as anyone else, wanted to know what happened that night. He sounded calm but somber, nothing like the man detectives interviewed in August.

The moments he won't talk about now, he made frustrated attempts to remember for detectives as they gently prodded him with questions.

"I'll always love her, and I'm sorry," he told them. "I don't know what it was that happened. I need to come up with an answer."

He tried to explain how they ended up in that abandoned house. He tried to explain why they argued.

He tried to explain how, as he fought with a woman he calls a soulmate, he reached for a lighter and gasoline.

BACK HOME

Kimbrough's memory doesn't fail him when he thinks back to March 2007.

He sees Megan at a friend's home in Scottsburg, Ind. He remembers introducing himself, their first date at a Cheesecake Factory. He remembers learning about her first child from a previous relationship. She had dark blond hair with a hint of red. In a word, she looked like "sunshine," he said.

"She had a glow about her. Just kind of radiant," he told The Ledger. "She was a natural beauty — didn't need makeup or nothing."

In months, they married. Soon they had a son, Donavan, a "daddy's boy," he said.

They started taking pain pills, seeking out the occasional high. That turned into frequent abuse. When the pills grew too expensive, the couple found a cheaper, better high with heroin. They moved to Indianapolis to find work and a closer source for the drug.

His memory is sharp here, too — the day they overdosed together. They paid a baby sitter to watch Donavan all day. They bought heroin in the morning and used it in their truck. Something didn't feel right as he drove away. The dope was too strong. He pulled into a gas station and asked Megan to drive. The next thing he remembers, he woke in a hospital with a tube in his throat.

They lost their son because of the overdose. The boy, now 2, moved to Pensacola with relatives. Kimbrough thought they needed to separate to get clean if they ever wanted to see him again. "It's hard for an addict to help an addict get clean," he said.

He called his parents in Florida.

GETTING CLEAN

Kimbrough curled into a ball on his mother's floor. "Just pretend I'm not here," Rita Sanders, his mother, remembers him saying. Withdrawals had put him in so much pain he couldn't carry himself to bed.

When he called from Indiana, Rita and her husband, David Sanders, decided to buy him a plane ticket to Florida and give him a place to stay in their Polk City home.

The couple spoke to a Ledger reporter in August, shortly after Kimbrough's arrest, but haven't returned calls to speak since. Megan's father, Ted Lawhorn of Noblesville, Ind., didn't respond to a request for an interview.

The first thing David Sanders noticed as Kimbrough strode into the airport in September 2011 was his gaunt body. He arrived without his wife. Knowing the couple had a troubled relationship, Kimbrough's family told him if he came, she had to stay behind.

"They weren't good for each other," Sanders said. "Even they knew it."

The withdrawal symptoms lasted two weeks. When Kimbrough cried, they cried. When his limbs shook with convulsions, they held them down. Until the withdrawals ebbed, they stayed up through the night with him. He finally began to gain weight, and they helped him find work.

In December, Kimbrough said, Megan moved to Florida. She surprised him one day after work. He told detectives that part of him didn't want to reunite, "But I love her, you know?"

Orange County Sheriff's Office reports show the couple spent New Year's Day together, when Kimbrough was arrested at an Orlando hotel. Swimmers at the pool complained he'd exposed himself and masturbated by the water, which led to his arrest. Family bailed him out.

Despite their help, his parents said, Kimbrough eventually left their home.

Kimbrough said the couple started using drugs again almost immediately. Sometimes they would use them in a house at 1117 N. Stella Ave. in Lakeland; when they needed to sleep, they stayed at a hotel with a friend.

Here's something Rita Sanders remembers well: Seeing the couple on East Memorial Boulevard near North Stella Avenue as she drove home from a doctor's appointment.

Megan stood on the sidewalk, watching traffic, she said. Down a side street, she saw her son talking to someone on a bicycle.

She drove on, saying a prayer.

‘MY HUSBAND, MY HUSBAND'

Sitting at the Lakeland Police Department in August, his ankle aching from a police dog's bite, Kimbrough told detectives early in their interview, "I guess I did it."

He insisted on knowing what Megan said happened. If she said he set her on fire, he repeatedly told them, then he must have. Detectives pressed him for what he remembered, and he gave them a string of memories.

He remembered swallowing seven Xanax and injecting four Roxicodone, a painkiller. He remembered seeing her on fire in the house on North Stella Avenue and trying to put her out. But when it came to how she was ignited, he told detectives, "That's where I'm lost."

Neighbors told police what they saw outside the house that evening. Some were used to seeing fire inside the house after dark. It had no power. But that evening, they heard screams.

They saw Megan run from the house covered in flames, "like a big old ball of fire running across the street," one recalled. She ran in circles, then fell into a yard. A neighbor told her to roll in the grass. Others held a sheet over her as rain began to fall.

One saw her look at the skin of her arms and heard her breath quicken. She asked them to tell medics to hurry. They asked her what happened. They remembered her attempts to explain:

"My husband threw gasoline on me."

"My husband, my husband."

"I don't know why he did it."

THE FIGHT

As he sits in jail, Kimbrough said this week, he replays the night in his head, trying to trigger memories. But he fails.

"It's been portrayed that I'm a monster," he said. "Whatever happened had to be a freak accident."

The moment the fire started was like a "blackout," Kimbrough told detectives. But he remembered they had argued over drugs and, in part, over his claims that she worked as a prostitute.

Some of the detectives' insight into their relationship comes from Mike Johnson, who knew the couple. He told detectives they had recently stayed in his RV. He knew of Megan's alleged prostitution but said Kimbrough encouraged it and depended on the money.

Kimbrough had grown jealous of a perceived relationship between Johnson and Megan, Johnson said. He told detectives he'd once heard Kimbrough threaten to kill her and he once said if "he couldn't have her, nobody would."

Johnson received a call from Kimbrough the night of Aug. 3 saying he'd lit his wife on fire, he told detectives. Johnson didn't believe him until later, when a friend saw it on news broadcasts.

"I want you to come down here and see how she looks now," Johnson remembers Kimbrough saying.

RUNNING

As Kimbrough struggled to remember, detectives moved beyond the fire to moments afterward. He described a strange night and morning that ended in his arrest.

After the fire, he left the house and took a van, he said, hoping to find his way to an interstate and back to Indiana. Court records also say he stole a license plate and burglarized a home, taking credit cards.

Instead of making it to the interstate, he crashed the van in a north Lakeland swamp. He began treading his way through water that sometimes reached his neck. He eventually came to a trailer, where he saw a man grilling.

"I told 'em that I think I caught my wife on fire some and — and I stole the van and wrecked it," he told detec-tives.

The people in the trailer allowed Kimbrough to stay, and he fell asleep inside. When police arrived later, he crawled beneath the trailer and fell back to sleep.

He woke to a police dog dragging him out.

During questioning, detectives continued zeroing in on the couple's fight, asking if something might have made him snap.

"She hates me now, don't she?" Kimbrough asked.

"I don't know if she's gonna have an opportunity to hate you," a detective said.

After they told Kimbrough his wife might not survive, he seemed more willing to answer questions — for himself as much as for police.

"I sleep and drink and breathe her," Kimbrough told them, "so why would I do that?"

The transcript is filled with sections that say Kimbrough's words were unintelligible or inaudible. But he did manage to pull from his memory a sketch of those moments in the house, however incoherent:

He remembered the argument escalating in a spot in the house where a gasoline can sat. He told them he remembered pouring gas into a cup and telling his wife he'd burn down the house. He threw the gas, but it's unclear whether he aimed at Megan.

He remembers holding a cigarette. He remembers flicking a lighter and how quickly fire engulfed Megan. He told detectives he remembers trying to put her out and thinking the flames were gone: